Made By Melissa

Yay! I completed course 2! Originally I wasn’t sure if  was going to take this class. I didn’t really see myself making a lot of cakes with flowers, and I am kind of anxious to start the fondant class. But in the end I decided to give it a try, and I am really glad I did! I feel like I learned a lot about working with royal icing, and I love how all of flowers came out! I also learned a couple of new borders and other decorating techniques.

Tonight’s class was all about the final cake. I started off by learning a rope border, then how to make a basket-weave design. Then I took all of the flowers I had made throughout the course and piled them on to the cake, along with the colorflow birds.

Next up is Wilton Course 3, fondant and tiered cakes! I am really looking forward to working with fondant and continuing to build on what I have already learned.

Flowers, flowers and more flowers! This class continued on with making flowers out of royal icing. 

We started out with the Victorian rose. Now if you read my post about the roses in course 1, you know that I was less than thrilled to be re-visiting this little gem. But this is the Victorian rose, which means it is made with a different tip! These beautiful roses were made with tip 97. I also think the consistency of the royal icing makes these easier to create. I was thrilled with how these came out.

Next we made daisies. These were probably the easiest flower of the night, and they are so cute! I can totally see myself making a cake covered with different colored daisies in the near future.

We went from the easiest flower to the most difficult, the daffodil. I love daffodils out in the real world, but in Wilton world, they are the devil. What makes these flowers so difficult is creating the little points on the petals. I think they have the potential to be very cute, but with so many other flowers I can make, I don’t see myself bothering with these again.

The next flowers we created were pansies. I love the look of the contrasting yellow and purple in these flowers. In person they really do look purple, not blue.

The last flower I learned was the primrose. These took a little practice to get the petal shape correct and making the last petal even with the first petal, but overall not a very hard flower and very pretty.

We had some extra time at the end of class and I had some extra icing so I made my chrysanthemums for the final cake. I had practiced these in class 1 with buttercream icing, but had not gotten around to making them with royal icing.

I love how all of my flowers are coming out and I am looking forward to putting them all together for the final cake.

Next class: The end of course 2, which means the final cake. The cake I will be making is an oval cake and I will add a basketweave border during class, then top with the final flowers.

Supplies needed: None. I just need to decide what kind of cake I will be making! I also need to make my second set of color flow birds, since the first set met an untimely demise.

This class was about decorating with colorflow and making the apple blossom, violet leaf and violet from royal icing. I have to be honest, colorflow is kind of a pain and I don’t see myself using it again. My understanding is that colorflow used to be widely used before fondant became popular. Colorflow is very similar to royal icing, except that, according to Wilton, whatever you are making will not be as shiny or as strong. Luckily the only colorflow we will be doing in this class was the two birds for the final cake. The two flowers we made are the smaller flowers for the cake.

The apple blossoms are fairly easy to make, it is just a matter of angling your tip to get the correct petal shape.

I love the vibrant color of the violets, unfortunately the come across with more of a blue color than purple here, but they really are pretty! I didn’t save the violet leaf I created since it is not needed for the final cake.

I will post a picture of color flow birds when I make another set. When I got home from class I put them on top our gas stove until I could put them away. Let’s just say Nate wasn’t paying attention to which burner he was turning on and we are very luck to still have a house!

Next class: Roses, primroses, daisies, daffodils and pansies all made with royal icing.

Supplies needed: No new supplies needed, except for I am almost out of meringue powder, so I will use the 50% off coupon from this weeks paper to buy some more at Micheals.

After completing Wilton course 1, I realized I am slowly turning in to a cake decorating junky and signed up for course 2 at Micheals. In course 2, I will be learning about using royal icing and color flow, with the focus being flowers and borders. I don’t have to make a cake for every class, like in course 1, instead I will use the various flowers made during the class with royal icing for the basket weave cake at the end.

No pics from this class since we only played aroud with the practice board. We reviewed the basics from course 1 and then learned how to make rosettes, the reverse shell border, the rosebud and the chrysanthemum. We only used buttercream icing in this class, but will begin with the royal icing and colorflow next week. Again, I am the only one signed up, so I was only there about an hour this time.

Next class: I will be making the colorflow bird for the final cake, as well as learning how to make apple blossoms, violets and violet leaves.

Supplies needed: I ended up buying the course 2 kit, since it contained the oval pans needed for the final cake. I also need to get some parchment triangles, a corsage pin and a couple of featherweight bags for the royal icing.

This was the last class of course 1. We reviewed the Wilton rose, learned how to make sweet peas, bows, leaves and vines. The final cake involved creating a rose spray- roses, leaves, vines and a bow, as well as a shell border with sweet peas tucked in around the bottom.

I have to say that I was just not into this cake, I have not been feeling well for the past couple of days and certainly did not put as much effort in to it as I should have. My Wilton rose did improve somewhat (though to me, they look more like carnations), and the sweet peas were fun to make, but I just wasn’t really feeling this cake. Overall, I have really enjoyed course 1 and plan to move on to course 2. My only complaint about the course is that I feel like I was so limited creatively, I loved making and decorating the cakes, but hated the fact that it had to be a rainbow/clown/rose cake. I know this is the best way to learn the techniques, but I feel like I could have learned them making a cake with my own creativity. I know that some instructors are a little more laid back about what cakes you make, as long as you demonstrate the basic technique, unfortunately mine is not one of them.

I would highly recommend this course to anyone interested in learning about the basics of cake decorating, I really did learn a lot and already have people asking me to make cakes for them. Here are my entries for classes one, two, and three.

I have been debating whether to post the picture of the final cake, since I am really not happy with it. But I am going to go ahead and put it out there for you to see.

Next Course: Course 2 is all about flowers and borders. You learn how to make flowers with color flow and royal icing and finish the course with a basket weave cake at the end. I am looking forward to not having to make a cake every week, just when I want to, and at the end. Cost of the next class is $35 at my Michaels, but again they are having a 50% off sale on classes for the month of April, plus I have the $5 off coupon I received at the end of course 1. Yay!

Supplies needed: I am still looking in to this, I will probably end up picking up the course 2 kit since it contains the oval pans needed for the final cake. I am having a hard time finding these by themselves, but the kit with a 40% off coupon should only be around $12.

Tonight I learned the Wilton rose (which we will never speak of again), the shell border, figure piping, drop flowers, and the cake was the “clown” cake.

The shell border is the most common cake border out there, it is the one you see on 99% of the cakes you would buy at the grocery store. It is a pretty easy border to make, and looks very pretty. Figure piping covered making little heads, teddy bears, hearts and fruit, as well as the clowns for the cake. The drop flowers are super cute little flowers that would be perfect for a spring cake.

I made a funfetti cake this time using the diet soda trick. My cake did not rise very much though, I am not sure if it was because I used the diet soda or something else. The cake was decorated with a star border on the top and bottom, multi-colored dots around the side and of course the clowns on top.

Clown Cake

Next class: The final class of course 1! Yay! The final cake revolves around the rose spray (ugghhh). It will incorporate leaves, vines, bows and floral accents. I will be spending my weekend practicing roses.

Supplies needed: There are no new supplies needed for this class, but I am going to pick up a couple more small spatulas.

This class built on the basics learned in the first class. I had to bring in an iced, 8-inch round cake which we then decorated and turned into a rainbow cake.

I have to say that the cake baked up beautifully. I baked the cake in an 8-inch round, 3-inch deep cake pan with the bake-even strips. I lowered the temp of the oven to 325 degrees and increased the baking time- I am not exactly sure how long, I started checking the cake at 1 hour and pulled it out when it looked done. After the cake cooled I used the cake leveler to level the top and make the layers.

The first actual challenge for me was frosting the cake. I used the cake icer tip to apply the icing and a flat spatula to spread and smooth the icing. This was much harder than I thought it would be. I had a hard time getting the icing to stick to the cake when it was coming out of the icer tip, then trying to smooth the icing with the spatula without it coming off the cake. This is the method my instructor recommended, but I am not sure it is the best way for me or maybe I just need more practice. If anyone has any tips, please feel free to leave a comment!

I brought my cake to class and learned how to decorate with the star tip, write with the round tip and how to do a piping gel pattern transfer. After a couple rounds on the practice board, I found the star tip and round tip fairly easy to use. The piping gel transfer technique is something that I think will definitely be helpful for future cakes.

Here is the end result:

Rainbow Cake

Next class: Flowers and figures, the Wilton rose, shell border and drop flowers. The cake is the clown cake.

Additional supplies needed: additional colors: black and orange, and the creepy clown heads. I also picked up another pack of couplers for a total of 10. I will need to bring an 8-inch round, frosted cake to class.

I have wanted to take a cake decorating class for at least a year now. But between work schedules, and having a baby, it was not happenning in 2007. I had planned to take it in January, then February, but again things just kept comming up.  So finally March was my month!  I was supposed to start class last week, and I was so excited. I had gone out and bought my supplies, planned my work schedule and was good to go. Imagine my disappointment to find out the class had been canceled. It turns out I was the only person signed up for the class, so I thought I would have to wait yet another month to take it in April. But the people at Michael’s were so nice and scheduled a special class just for me on Tuesday and the schedule will resume on Thursday.

I was a little nervous about being the only person in the class, but the instructor quickly put me at ease and assured me she gets paid either way! Tonight I basically just learned about how to frost a cake so that it is smooth and also about what I will be learning about in course one and what supplies I would need.

Prior to the class, I read about Katie’s experience with class 1. She is very smart, so I took her advice and purchased the Wilton Cake Decorating Caddy and Tools kit. It’s like my own little cake decorating tackle-box! I am one of those people who has the best intentions of being organized, but am rarely able to follow-through. However, this thing makes it very easy to keep everything in it’s place. There are spots for tips/couplers, colors and some small items on top, then the bottom is open for the larger items. I also brought a small notebook as suggested and a pen to write in the actual instruction booklet with.

The caddy comes with:

• 19 decorating tips- all the ones you will need for courses 1-3
• 2 couplers
• decorating brush
• 10″ re-usable decorating bag
• practice board
• tip brush
• 4 icing colors (lemon yellow, royal blue, leaf green, Christmas red)
• 18 disposable decorating bags
• flower nail
• instruction booklet
• small angled spatula

After the class tonight, I picked up some more supplies per the recommendation of the instructor and also those things that are required for the next class.

• toothpicks and holder
• scissors
• wax paper
• 8″ round, 3″ deep cake pan
• piping gel
• 10″ cake circles
• clear vanilla and almond extract, and butter flavor
• bake-even strips- supposedly these help the cake bake evenly, resulting in moist, level cakes
• cake icer tip and 16″ re-usable bag to put it in
• icing colors ( no-taste red, violet, kelly green)
• 4-pack of couplers
• small containers for frosting
• revolving cake stand

Total cost for everything so far is around $75. The caddy was $50, but I used a 40% off coupon for that. I also used a 40% off coupon for the most expensive item tonight and the 10% off coupon you get on all cake supplies for taking the course. The cost of the class was $17.50 this month, normally $35, but I guess at different Michael’s, they charge different rates.

The next class we (I) will be making the “rainbow” cake. I am not really sure what I am going to with this cake, but I am looking forward to finally decorating a cake!

Sorry this turned into such a long blog entry, but I found these posts very helpful when I was looking into taking the course, and it is also a way for me to keep track of things!